Wayne Rooney obviously does not suffer from telephobia but on England duty he can sleep only with the hairdryer on. Photograph: Dennis Sabangan/EPA

Not long after he had convinced Aston Villa to spend £5m on the young Portsmouth striker Peter Crouch in 2002, and with the player not proving especially prolific, Graham Taylor was asked why the forward could be struggling so. "One of the main problems for Peter is that he still has a bit of a phobia about being so tall," the Villa manager said. "While I sympathise with Peter, my message to him must be: 'Forget all that and think about scoring a goal instead.'"

While the likes of Shaun Wright‑Phillips could probably get away with it, for a player who measures 6ft 7in a phobia about being tall can be quite debilitating. So much so that he struggled through the entirety of his first full season in the Midlands without scoring. But Crouch, left as he was with little option but to face up to his fear and take it quite literally head on, has overcome his vertiginous wobbles to spend nearly a decade as one of the Premier League's more effective forwards.

David Beckham may have an issue with disorder – "I have to have everything in a straight line or in pairs" – and Wayne Rooney may be an eccentric sleeper – "If I'm staying in a hotel or on my own I have the hairdryer on" – but English football has been without a celebrated scare since aerophobic Dennis Bergkamp took the fast ferry home from Arsenal in 2006.

The Dutchman's flight fright never did his club any harm, and perversely since the departure of their one player who refused to take off – which coincided with the move to a stadium named after an airline – the team have become increasingly pedestrian. Could it be more than coincidence that during his peak years Arsène Wenger packed his squad with similarly afflicted footballers, including Gilles Grimandi – "I'm not comfortable flying. I really don't like it" – and Paul Merson – "Glenn could see I was bricking it. 'You all right?' he said. 'I hate flying, boss. I'm shitting myself'"?

Over the past couple of years Wenger has been repeatedly linked with Sevilla's Jesús Navas, a flamboyantly skilled and remarkably fleet-footed winger who once suffered from such severe homesickness that he had to be rescued from a training camp in Huelva, just 90km away from his hometown. Navas, who is now being heavily linked with a summer move to Manchester City, has since dealt with his issues and was a member of Spain's victorious 2010 World Cup and 2012 European Championship squads. "I had reached a point that made me realise I needed to put up a fight," he said. And Navas is not the only player whose most meaningful victory has perhaps been over his own demons, rather than someone else's defenders.

Top players are supposed to make the most of their prodigious talent by combining it with monomaniacal focus – truly great players, the Diego Maradonas, Cristian Ronaldos, George Bests and Lionel Messis, can get away with whatever they want, though some of them choose not to – so their dedication should be so all-consuming that there is simply no head space left for logic‑defying terror.

No matter. Anecdotal evidence suggests that phobias can be far from detrimental. From World Cup-winning England captain Bobby Moore – "I had a subconscious fear of Pelé" – to one of his successors in England's back line, Manchester United's Phil Jones – "When I go abroad I can't go in lifts. I don't mind it in England but I can't do it when I go away" – some of our finest footballers have suffered. Matt Holland racked up 223 consecutive games for Ipswich, including a run of Premier League matches unequalled by any outfield player but Frank Lampard, all the while ranking animals on a scale of terror: "I'm scared of dogs and cats," he once confessed, "but horses don't seem to bother me much."

It is not just at the highest level that a bit of irrational fear seems to help. In 2002 Tiptree United of the Jewson Eastern Counties League were drawn away to Cowes Sports, based on the Isle of Wight, in the third round of the FA Vase, and their vice-captain, Wayne Houghton, refused to play. He was afraid of travelling over water. "There's no way I can step on board that ferry," he said.

The ensuing publicity mesmerised a local hypnotherapist, and under his influence the player made the journey. Not only did Tiptree, who had never made it past round two, win that game, they also won the next, at Pickering Town. "Wayne was asleep when we crossed the River Trent," said their manager, Neil Farlie, "and he's happy in the knowledge that we won't have any more journeys across water, however far we go in the Vase." They went another four rounds, all the way to the final.

Clearly in football phobias are nothing to be afraid of but we would be better able to delight in the deeds of these panicky players had we not by now developed a collective and frequently catastrophic national dread. There is nothing wrong with footballers being frozen with fear from time to time, so long as the object that terrifies them is not white, round, 12 yards from goal and regularly used to decide football matches.